Title: Mudd’s Women
Airdate: 10/13/1966
Plot Summary
The Enterprise is pursuing a ship that pushes itself to the limit trying to get away. But unfortunately the ship explodes. They beam up the 4 people who are on the vessel, which turns out to be conman Harry Mudd and his cargo, 3 beautiful women who have a strange power on the male members of the crew.
On top of that, trying to chase down the ship has burned out their dilithium crystals, forcing the Enterprise to negotiate the woman with a mining colony in order to repair the ship. But the secret of the drug that keeps the women beautiful threatens to cause everything to fall apart.
Risk is our Business
Kirk is married to his ship and hot chicks have no effect on him. 79 episodes will prove this wrong as time goes on.
Logical
Spock does very little here, offering information occasionally on when they are all going to die unless they get some crystals.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy is pretty much as smitten as everyone else on the ship by Mudd’s women. He does however come out of it a little when one of the women makes his medical scanner go binky bonkers and he’s very mystified by this.
Canon Maker
McCoy comments when they are trying to beam the ladies aboard that he never trusted the transporter, thereby establishing a famous character trait for decades to come.
Canon Breaker
For some reason when they show the girls arriving on the ship, they have such an effect on McCoy in the transporter room that he teleports back to sickbay in a different uniform in close-up shots.
Mudd realized Spock is Vulcanian, a term that would be used a few more times before just simply referring to the logical race as “Vulcan” or “A Vulcan.”
The Dilithium crystals are referred to here as “lithium crystals.” Maybe that’s why they failed.
Uhura wears a gold uniform instead of her customary red. Red really looked better on her.
Man It Feels Bad To Be a Red Shirt
No one dies! How nice.
Technobabble
This episode really sets the importance of dilithium crystals in star fleet engines. They thankfully won’t be nearly this fragile going forward.
Truth serum is apparently no longer needed as the computer seems to be a very effective lie detector.
I know that guy:
Roger Carmel makes his first of two appearances. Karan Steel, Susan Denberg, and Maggie Thrett play the three sirens.
What it means to be human – Review
God what a shit show of an episode. Mudd is presented as a con man, but he’s also a human trafficker. Then there’s the women themselves, just wanting some husbands and willing to take some weird drug to look hot, just so they can get a man. One of the things Gene Roddenberry wanted was “Wagon Train to the stars,” Wagon Train being a western show back in the 60’s before Trek.
The idea of women needing to go to such lengths to find a husband to take care of them makes sense in a western context but makes no sense in the 23rd century. So everything just comes across as yuck.
Then there’s the fact that the Enterprise chasing some cargo ship for reasons that aren’t really that clear in the first place, will push itself so hard that it burns out all its dilithium crystals. If the ship was really that fragile, it would’ve blown up after the first episode.
There’s the miner’s base which apparently is manned by three people. They make a ton of money, something that Trek is really fuzzy on, and live like penniless hobos. Really their living quarters look awful. Why would the ladies be fine with this dirty, stormy, wasteland to set down roots? I assume they want kids, where the heck are they going to school?
Kirk just seems kinda ok with the entire arrangement. He doesn’t really object to selling off the women, just not being able to take Mudd into custody.
As for the drug, it apparently has a physical effect on the women, which more or less makes them look like they took off their make up. Ok fine, weird beauty drug. But then when Kirk gives one of the women a placebo, it works? How?
Terrible episode.
